Two components of a product design workflow include (A) design capture using, for example, a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system, and (B) simulation of the captured design. Existing approaches to design simulation require the user to explicitly invoke the simulation once the user determines that the design has progressed enough to warrant simulation results. In order to do so, the user needs to take specific action—the user must manually switch from the CAD application to a simulation application, and invoke a simulation run through the simulation application. Once the simulation is complete, the user must again take action to view the simulation results and determine whether there are any interesting conclusions to be drawn from the results. All of these discrete steps take the user away from his core interest of creating and refining the product design.